I should like to highlight here (see also TomDispath.com version) a remarkable essay by Greg Grandin, one that contrasts two of Melville’s characters as faces of Empire: Captain Ahab and the historical sealing captain Amasa Delano, who partook in the massive late eighteenth century extirpation of seal populations in the South Pacific for fur, which was used a luxury item for the wealthy, and who put down a slave rebellion aboard a Spanish slave ship.  Delano viewed himself as a moral man, one “who has a knowledge of his duty, and is disposed faithfully to obey its dictates.”

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